Dexamethasone-Induced Thymus Apoptosis in Mice

Female C57BL/6 N mice were purchased from Orient Bio (Seongnam, Korea). All mice were acclimatized for 2 weeks at the laboratory animal research facility (National Cancer Center, Korea). The mice were administered 25 mg/kg BMS794833 (Cayman, USA) or control (5% DMSO, 10% kolliphor in PBS) by intraperitoneal injection. After 30 min, 8 mg/kg dexamethasone (Selleckchem, USA) was administered to the mice by intraperitoneal injection to induce thymus apoptosis. The thymus was collected and dissociated into a single-cell suspension as previously described in refs. ^{4 (link),23} . The thymocytes were analyzed by annexin V and propidium iodide staining and flow cytometry at the Flow Cytometry Core Facility (National Cancer Center, Korea) using FACSVerse (BD Bioscience, USA) as described previously^{24 (link)}.